A Suggestion about the Meaning and Derivation of Two Words of the Second Chapter of Vendidad

The present article deals with the re-examination of two words from the second chapter of Vendidad, which considerations of scholars about their meaning and derivation are not satisfactory. One of these two words is the vīuuīse, which according to Bartholomae is an infinitive but the construction of which and its syntactic relationship with other parts of the sentence do not confirm it to be an infinitive. The evidence shows that this word can only be the second singular perfect of vīuuīs- from the root vaēs- “to be ready as”. The other is a word that Bartholomae corrected as astǝm, and in the phrase astǝm iθra fracarǝṇta pasuuasca, he considered it the object of the verb fracarǝṇta. However, in the Geldner's edition, the mentioned word is recorded as two independent words as tǝm, and apparently this reading was the focus of the Pahlavi translators of Vendidad. In addition, there are great linguistic reasons that show fracarǝṇta cannot be a form derived from fra + car- “to establish” and correcting as tǝm as astǝm, and to conceive the late form as the object of the verb fracarṇta is incorrect.